Generosity News

Rankin Paynter

A businessman from Winchester, Clark County, Kentucky, USA has hit the headlines this week for an amazing act of spontaneous generosity.

Rankin Paynter, who runs a jewellery exchange was shopping at his local K-Mart, which was about to close for good. He asked a cashier what would happen to the unsold stock and was told that ‘power buyers’ would take it all. (Power buyers are wholesalers who purchase large amounts of bankrupt stock to sell on to others.) He immediately signed up to be one, and six and a half hours later had purchased $200,000 worth of clothing and other goods (the store’s remaining stock), which he then gave away to a non-profit that helps families facing crisis situations – Clark County Community Services.

Mr Paynter was reported to have said that, having seen so many needy people coming into his store to sell their jewellery, he felt it was time to give something back to the community.

A spokesperson for the charity said this was the biggest individual donation they had ever received, and that it would mean for the first time next winter they would have enough coats, hats and gloves to provide for all the children they serve.

Really restores your faith in human nature, doesn’t it?

Tags: children, community, debt, generosity, giving, inspiration, poverty

Is tithing charity?

An interesting controversy has been hitting the charity scene recently. Congregations are encouraged (and have been encouraged since the dawn of Christianity) to tithe – i.e. give a tenth of their income –  to their churches, but a number of high-profile figures have started asking whether this constitutes charitable giving. Some people have even questioned whether a church should be considered a charity at all, if it doesn’t carry out identifiably charitable work such as assisting the poor.

Underlying this debate is an even deeper philosophical question about what motivates anyone’s giving to help others. Can donations be considered charitable if we expect something in return (even if very indirectly – such as increased social standing or just plain ‘feeling good about ourselves’)? Of course, if this kind of thinking is taken to its logical conclusion it tends to call into question the whole concept of unselfishness. What has raised this particular line of reasoning is the so-called ‘prosperity gospel’ or ‘seed faith’, which teaches that tithing can bring its own directly-linked rewards, as suggested by the Old Testament’s Malachi 3:10, which says, “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

Although this quotation doesn’t actually promise financial gain as a result of tithing, many people have interpreted it that way, which rather overlooks the suggestion in James 1:27 that our beneficence should also extend to those who have no hope of ever paying us back. What the Malachi quotation does promise us, however, is that we will receive our just rewards in one way or another – though not necessarily in the way that we expect, or (perhaps) even during our present lifetime.

However, the real issue here is how much (if any) of churches’ income actually goes towards helping the needy, and how much is swallowed up in administrative expenses – in perpetuating their own existence. This is perhaps a question that those of us who are members of congregations should be asking ourselves. And by extension, perhaps all of us – church-goers or not – should look very critically at those non-church charities we support, and reassure ourselves that their operating costs aren’t too excessive. I know that my own church – the Salvation Army – which is 100% a charity as well as 100% a church, manages its overheads very tightly, and pays its employees only modest salaries. But that cannot be said for all charities – and certainly not for all churches. And in the case of those churches which do little for the needy, perhaps they should consider exactly why they exist at all… particularly in the light of the guidance we find in Biblical verses such as Matthew 5:16 and 20:28 and Galatians 6:10.

So… are you a churchgoer, and is so, do you tithe? And if you do, do you consider this to be charitable giving? Let’s have some feedback with the following poll:

Tags: Christianity, giving, Salvation Army

Food banks

A couple of days ago I blogged about the Community Soup Bowl, in Tuscaloosa, and a few days before that I covered the ‘Stamp Out Hunger’ Food Drive. I quoted the latter’s statistics, which say that 1 in 6 Americans live below the poverty line and are facing hunger today (including more than 16 million children). Figures from the Trussell Trust – the UK’s largest food bank network – show a similar ratio here.

This set me thinking about food banks, and the pressing need to find ways of getting surplus food to those who really need it. No doubt you, like me, are aware of programmes locally to where you live that aim to do exactly this. In Swansea, a large city just a few miles from here, a church-run food bank opened a year ago, and it has already served around 900 people, from all parts of society… young people, elderly people, families and pregnant mothers. Food is donated by supermarkets, other churches and individuals. A few miles in the other direction is the Bridgend Food Bank, operated by the aforementioned Trussell Trust. Now in its third year, it receives a lot of its supplies via the local Sainsbury’s supermarket, which has a donation area in its foyer for shoppers to deposit items. Over the last year around two new food banks a week have opened, around the UK, and the Bridgend one is among a total of just over 200 currently run by the Trust, which distributes over 1200 tonnes of food each year and reckons that by 2016 approximately a half-million people will be receiving food parcels.

In Cornwall a new food bank has recently opened in the town of Saltash – supported by the hardware company Screwfix – as reported earlier this week by the Cornish Guardian,  in the wake of neighbouring towns’ (Callington, Liskeard and Looe) foodbanks being overwhelmed by demand.

In London one charity that has been operating for the last 25 years in this field is PlanZheroes, which takes waste food from industry and ensures that it gets to the needy: for example, it recycles left-over sandwiches from the Pret A Manger chain.

According to WRAP (the UK Government’s waste adviser) each year in Britain we waste between 14 and 18 million tonnes of food, in total, with around half of this occurring in the home (where about a quarter of all food purchased is eventually wasted). Industry (both here and in other parts of the world) is trying to address this – in the USA, for example, there’s New York’s City Harvest, while Italy has its innovative Last Minute Market; but as individuals we also need to be more waste-conscious. It’s quite mindblowing to realise that if just a quarter of all the food wasted in the UK, the USA and Europe was available to the almost one billion hungry people in the world they could all be saved from malnourishment! And when one considers that much of this wasted food is perfectly healthy and nutritious, it’s even more shocking.

This is why food waste campaigner Tristram Stuart is on a mission to persuade us to be less fussy about the food we eat. He has written a book on the subject – Waste – and last year he fed 5,000 people in Trafalgar Square, using ingredients that would otherwise have gone to landfill. For the same reasons, chef Tom Hunt has opened a restaurant in Bristol (my birthplace) that works together with the charity A Taste of Freedom to utilise food such as ripe fruit or imperfectly shaped vegetables that would otherwise be destined for landfill.

As we become ever more conscious of the limitations of our shrinking world our approach to food is starting to change – and not a moment too soon.

One final thought, though: as an almost lifelong vegetarian, I feel obliged to point out that one way of easing the world’s food supply problem (and perhaps addressing some other issues at the same time) would be for everyone to switch to a vegetarian diet. After all, meat production is an extremely wasteful process. But perhaps that’s a little too radical an idea for this blog?! I’d be interested to know, however, just how many of my readers would be sympathetic to this idea…

Tags: community, free meals, Planet Earth, poverty, social enterprise

Trayvon Martin

Just as something positive eventually came out of the death of Rachel Joy Scott during the Columbine High School massacre the aftermath of the recent killing of Trayvon Martin by ‘neighbourhood watch’ volunteer George Zimmerman has shown how generous and compassionate people can be when faced with evidence of others’ suffering and need.

Aware that Trayvon’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, had understandably used up a lot of leave from her government job, following her son’s death, many of her fellow government employees have been donating spare vacation time, with a total value of nearly $41,000, and equivalent to 34 paid weeks off. One employee gave a whole week’s worth of his vacation, and even the deputy mayor chipped in. In all, 192 people have contributed in this way.

A Foundation has also been set up, to channel the large amount of funds that are being donated. In March Trayvon’s parents created the Justice for Trayvon Martin Foundation, because they didn’t want to appear to be profiting from their son’s death. However, as employees of the non-profit, they will be receiving payment to cover their legitimate expenses, as they travel around speaking and carrying out advocacy work. Last week they were even invited to London to speak, such is the interest in the case. Their plan is to raise a total of $1.5 million to set up teaching programmes, to bring conflict resolution to teenagers.

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day in the USA (and a number of other countries) and Trayvon’s mother released the following video:

Tags: community, compassion, generosity, giving, obituary, teenager, training

Soup Bowl

At the weekend I posted a blog on the USA’s annual ‘Stamp Out Hunger’ Food Drive. Now I have learned of a local community effort in Tuscaloosa that dishes out nutritious hot meals every day, subject to sufficient numbers of volunteers being available.

The Community Soup Bowl is supported by the First Presbyterian, First Baptist, First United Methodist, and First African churches, Tuscaloosa. For the last 30 years it has been serving daily lunches to the needy – apart from a few occasions when there were insufficient volunteers. This summer it is looking for additional help, to ensure that it can continue to offer its much-needed service. Many of the recipients of the meals would simply go hungry without the Soup Bowl, and sometimes this is the first meal that they’ve had for several days. The number of people being served runs into the hundreds and is on the increase. The teams of volunteers include members of Sunday-school classes and youth clubs from the supporting churches, and this is felt to be a good eye-opener for those young people, as well as a way of involving them in caring for others. However, in order to ease their workload there’s now an urgent need for more volunteers.

If you think you might be able to help, contact the Director Amy Grinstead on 205-752-2421, or go along to 1711 23^rd Avenue (just off Greensboro Avenue), any time between 9am and 1pm. (Lunches are served between 11 and 12.50.) Help is especially needed over the weekends, and particularly during July this year. All are welcome (although under-16s must be accompanied by their parents), and no previous experience is necessary.

Tags: Christianity, community, effort, free meals, giving, poverty, training